Leroy caught with the neighbor's sheep

[PARAGON]

<SPAN class=h2hed>Deputy fire chief faces indecency charge </SPAN>



<DIV class=story>The Arizona Republic
Mar. 7, 2006 10:17 AM


</P>
<DIV class=story id=storyBody>



<DIV class=storyText id=storyBody>Leroy Donald Johnson was caught this weekend
in a barn with his pants down, literally, according to a sheriff's office
report.

"You caught me ... I tried to (expletive) your sheep," Johnson
told his neighbor, according to the report.

But the Mesa Fire Department
deputy fire chief changed his story when a sheriff's deputy arrived on his
doorstep minutes later, denying anything happened.

Johnson, 52, was
jailed on suspicion of disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing after the
neighbor told investigators he found Johnson, unzipped and holding a sheep down
on its side.

That's the sanitized version. The Maricopa County Sheriff's
Office report released Monday night is a little more graphic.

Johnson's
neighbor told sheriff's deputies he was called home Saturday afternoon when his
13-year-old daughter saw Johnson drag one of their sheep into a barn.

The
teenager said Johnson had first knocked on the front and back door of the home
in the 1200 block of East Catclaw Street, in a county island in Gilbert, before
grabbing the small gray lamb, records showed.

One of the deputies noted
that Johnson had bloodshot eyes and smelled of alcohol, and neighbors who
confronted him said he admitted everything.

According to the deputy's
report, "(The owner) took me into the back yard and showed me where he and
(neighbor) pulled up. He took me through the corral gate and I saw the victim
for the first time. She was a small gray lamb about three feet tall and four
feet long."

The men then told the deputy they walked over to the small
barn, opened the door and "saw Leroy holding the lamb down on its side in the
hay with his pants down trying to have sex with it. That's when he made the
statement about (expletive) the lamb."

The men said Johnson stood up and
zipped up his pants.

"The sheep ran out of the barn at that point," the
report says.

Johnson apologized, according to the report, and said he'd
had "too much to drink."

The Mesa Fire Department placed Johnson, on
paid leave Monday pending an internal investigation. Johnson, deputy chief of
technical services, has been with the Mesa Fire Department for nearly 26 years.


Assistant Fire Chief Mary Cameli said Johnson has been an "exemplary"
employee with a spotless personnel record.

"We were all very surprised by
this," Cameli added.

Johnson did not return a call for comment
Monday.

When confronted by a deputy at his home, Johnson initially denied
the incident, saying he had been at his neighbor's house to talk about
annexation.

Johnson said he went into the barn after hearing noises. The
deputy said to him, "I believe something more than that happened," and offered
help.

Johnson responded, "I probably do need some help, but I don't know
if this is the time or place for it," according to the report.

When asked
how the animal got into the barn, Johnson said, "I'm not going there," then
asked if he was going to be arrested and demanded to know his legal options.


He continued to deny that anything happened in the barn and was
arrested.

"I think it's disgusting," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said. "I think
of Ghandi who said you judge the morality of a country by the way they treat
their animals. . . . I do look at (bestiality) as some type of animal
cruelty."</DIV></DIV></DIV> <SPAN class=sidebar>Leroy Johnson </SPAN>